About SCALE

About the Southern California Linux Expo

The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) is sponsored by the Linux Expo of Southern California Inc.

SCALE's mission is to evangelize the advantages of Open Source software. Open Source software is any software that meets the litmus test of the OSI (Open Source Initiative). Examples of OSS are GNU/Linux and the various BSD operating systems, and applications such as OpenOffice.org and Firefox.

Our target audiences are both current and potential users of OSS*. Those users can be individual computer users, educational institutions, or businesses.

The Expo's educational focus is composed of (but not limited to) technical seminars and booths where, among other things, both commercial software and hardware vendors, and local non-profit groups (for example, Linux Users Groups), participate in product display, and software demonstrations and tutorials, respectively.

We are vendor and distribution neutral in our outreach efforts.

About This Website

Web hosting and email for SCALE is provided by ACTUSA. This website should be viewable with any browser. If you have any questions or problems, please let us know.

Privacy Policy

The Linux Expo of Southern California gathers personal information from people who register to attend the So Cal Linux Expo. This information is ONLY used by SCALE to improve future Expos. If other groups that participate in SCALE ask for information about attendees to improve their offering at SCALE, and we agree to share it, it will be only those demographics that are not identifiable to any individual.

We'll treat your personal information like your other valuable possessions; with great care.

Note that you can give your badge information to vendors if you're interested in getting more information about their products. That's voluntary, and SCALE does not participate in that information exchange.

The History of SCALE

Most of the core team has been involved in SCALE since its inception, and some date even further back to the original “LUGFests” that were held by SCLUG at the Nortel facility in Simi Valley, California, in the late 90s. There were four of them, held every 6 months. They ended when Nortel closed their facility in 2000.

When we first started SCALE, we all became involved because there weren’t many regional open-source events in general, and Los Angeles seemed especially lacking. We wanted to have a place where the community could meet, learn, and network once a year, but we were putting on the event as much for ourselves as we were for the community. We wanted to bring open-source projects and developers to our town, rather than travel north to LinuxWorld once a year.

Every team member has their own motivation for participating in SCaLE, but the general theme is that it’s a labor of love. We all genuinely enjoy working on the event. It’s how we give back to the community. Beyond the core team we generally have another ~30 volunteers who join us in the days leading up to SCALE and during the event. Many of them have become volunteers because of how much they enjoyed SCALE in previous years.

The desire to help build community is still at the very core at SCALE and has shaped the event into what it is today. We’ve grown, and while few of the organizers actually get to attend the presentations due to being busy running the Expo, we are still eager to bring educational opportunities to our fellow community members, as well as to provide outreach to potential community members who have never used Linux or FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).